


Galatea

by fleurjaune



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Identity Reveal, Ambiguity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad Decisions, Be Careful What You Wish For, Consent Issues, Dark, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Gabriel Agreste screws up, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth Wins, I feel like T is fine for what you see on screen but the premise is Yikes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Alteration, Mentioned Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Mentioned Emilie Agreste, Mentioned Nathalie Sancoeur, Minor Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, POV Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, The author does not condone Gabriel's choices, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28414563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurjaune/pseuds/fleurjaune
Summary: Gabriel wishes to save both Emilie and Nathalie; and he gets his wish for a certain interpretation of that phrase.
Relationships: Emilie Agreste/Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56





	Galatea

Nathalie collapses out of the lift. “You were right.”

She opens her hand to show him, Chat Noir and Ladybug’s Miraculous.

A headache starts to build in his temple. It had been Adrien then. Adrien and his girlfriend who he’d actually been starting to not dislike despite himself. He ignores the small pang of his conscience. There’s no reason either of them should ever have to know, “Did they wake?”

“No, they slept right through my sentimonster removing them.”

“Ah.” Creating something that couldn't be seen or heard to do the job had been a genius strike on Nathalie’s part but she's yet to stand up and he wonders if it had truly been necessary to push her so far.

He bends down to her and ignores the proffered Miraculous to help her up instead, “Come on Nathalie.”

She’s tense in his arms, and she doesn't relax into his hold like normal, but he can feel her weakness in the weight she's lost and the ribs he can feel through her jumper, so he pulls her tight against him anyway.

Sometimes he wonders if all of this _has_ been worth it.

Then he glances at Emilie’s casket over Nathalie’s head and he knows it has to be. There’s no other option.

“Sir?” Nathalie asks, and he doesn’t understand why she sounds so nervous, “You can let go. I can stand.”

He doesn’t want to. He's not convinced that she can. By this stage he can no longer lie to himself and claim he hasn’t noticed how she’s been pushing herself past any reasonable limits and how she tries to hide it. How she martyrs herself in secret for him.

What he wants is to hold onto her permanently, or to pin her down to a bed, and make her rest, and keep her where she can’t sneak off and ignore his orders and get herself hurt.

She's very similar to Emilie that way.

Not that he'd been able to save her either.

Except he is going to. Right now. He’s _won._

Now he can save both of them.

And he doesn’t care if that means someone else loses their Emilie or their Nathalie.

He’s been on this damned quest for too long. Let someone else have a go.

“I’m sorry Nathalie.” He says letting go of her.

She looks down at her hand and the jewels there instead of meeting his eyes, “Did you want me to make the wish?”

“No,” he takes her hand in his, “That’s my job. I've asked enough of you.”

There’s no need to blacken her soul further. Not after all she’s done out of disinterested loyalty to him.

As he struggles to put the earrings on, he says, “I really am sorry you know.”

It's a weak apology for what he's done to her, and she must know that because she continues to look down even without the excuse of any Miraculous in her hand, “It's fine. I always knew how this was going to turn out.”

Once he's got the ring on he takes her face in his hands, and gently forces her to look at him, “It's not fine. You’ve done so much more than you had to, but I promise you it's over now. You're not going to be in any more pain.”

Something makes him kiss her forehead as if that will melt the ice stature she seems to have turned into.

From the shaky exhale she makes, as if she’s going to cry, he's succeeded at that. Even if the results aren't what he wants at all.

He releases her but takes her hand, “I want to be closer to Emilie, when I make the wish.”

That suddenly seems vital.

Nathalie doesn’t object to being pulled down the catwalk.

* * *

With a hand on his wife’s casket and a hand in his assistant’s own Gabriel makes his wish.

* * *

He wakes before his alarm. He always has.

From the tingling sensation on his scalp as fingers run though his hair, he's not the first one awake though.

“You’re sleepy this morning,” his wife says, and for a moment it’s like the air in the room has lost all is oxygen, before it suddenly regains it, as if his wife being there with him in the morning isn't the most natural thing in the world.

“I had a long day yesterday,” he says and he knows that's true even if he's not quite sure why.

She leans over him and her long dark hair brushes his check, “Well, you still have to get up. You've that meeting with Audrey.”

“Urgh, don’t remind me.”

She smiles, and sits up, “Gabriel get up. She's not that bad. She's always been very good to us.”

For a moment that didn’t seem right. The memory blossomed vividly of Audrey yelling at the woman in front of him, at the woman he loves, at his last fashion show and of the protectiveness that had bloomed in his chest at that moment.

He shakes his head, it must have been a silly misunderstanding. His wife and Audrey are longstanding friends from their schooldays. Without that connection he might not have caught her attention as quickly as he did.

* * *

He thinks he's the first one to the Atelier but then she places a cup of coffee down by him, and he looks up to see triumph dancing in her catlike green eyes, “Aren't you lucky to have an assistant who looks out for you as much as me?”

“I am.” He acknowledges, and bends down to kiss her, “That’s why I married you, so you couldn't leave me.”

* * *

She's a distraction at that desk. Every time he looks over that her his heart swells inside him, almost choking him. He’s blessed to have her.

Only he can't remember her name.

It’s ridiculous. He loves her. He built his company with her. He has a son with her.

How can he have suddenly woken up and forgotten her _name?_

It ends “lie” but the start and the middle elude him.

* * *

Aurelie?

Her dark hair suggests not. But then she’d had fair hair when she was born that had darkened later. That’s why they’d been unsure what colour Adrien’s would be for so long.

She could be Aurelie.

* * *

Adrien comes home and hugs his mother and something about the mismatch between the two of them looks wrong as if Adrien hasn’t always had the same ash-blonde Gabriel had had in his own youth before all the dyeing and the greying, rather than matching his mother’s raven hair.

Then they both look at him with those identical eyes and everything is perfect in the world.

* * *

Ophélie?

For some reason the image of her lying suspended there like her maybe-namesake comes to his mind all too easily, but surrounded in glass not water.

He shudders at the hideous image.

No, his wife is loved, and sane, and alive. He doesn’t want her name to be Ophélie.

* * *

“Adrien’s girlfriend is coming over to dinner so be nice.”

“I'm _always_ nice to Marinette.”

“Lecturing her on not giving her friends commissions for free is not being nice.” She frowns slightly as she re-adjusts his cravat, “I'm not the designer but I think a standard tie would go better with this suit.”

“Nonsense,” his hand covers hers to correct it himself, she knows why-why there's no reason he needs to wear so much fabric around his neck, he's not hiding anything, “I've always valued your opinion. You have exquisite taste my dear.”

* * *

Désirée.

The name flashes though his mind suddenly.

And yes, it encapsulates his feelings for her but it doesn’t even have the right ending.

* * *

It all comes crashing down in one day.

“What's that darling?” he fights to keep his voice steady as he sees the Grimoire impossibly in her hands.

“These heroes we keep seeing on the news,” she says flatly, “I think I've found out what gives them their powers.”

“What?” it comes out dully as if he doesn’t know exactly what powers Ladybug and Chat Noir. As if he hadn’t tried to get those very things for so long. As if they hadn’t used to fight Papillon instead of mundane threats.

“Gabriel _,”_ She stands up and there are tears shining unshed in her eyes, “ _This_ ,” it's open on the page for the Black Cat Miraculous, “This looks like Adrien’s ring. The one he said was a present from a friend.”

His legs go weak beneath him.

_Adrien is Chat Noir._

“Gabriel?” Her voice wavers in the middle of his name.

_Gabriel had had her steal the ring from Adrien’s sleeping finger to revive her._

He pulls the book out of her hands, and lets it fall to the sofa, and pulls her into his arms. This time he’s not sure if he’s holding her up, or if he’s clinging to her to stay upright.

“What do we _do_?” She begs him, as if he has any answer for her at all, as if he’d had any idea what he’d done.

“I don’t know.” He says because it’s all he can say, “I don’t know.”

She cries in his arms. He doesn’t.

She’s terrified.

He’s _horrified._

“Oh god,” She says, “Amélie’s supposed to be coming over tomorrow with Felix. I’ll have to cancel, I can’t face her like this. Not unlike we’ve sorted things with Adrien.”

* * *

“Yes, yes I know,” the twin with the more golden hair, and impossibly he thinks the prettier face even though he’s fairly certain they’re identical, says, “Amélie and Emilie. It is a bit twee isn’t it? I don’t know what our parents were thinking.”

 _Emilie._

His wife’s name was Emilie.

* * *

“Maybe we should cancel everything. Take Adrien out of Paris for the day before we raise the issue?” He suggests in a desperate attempt to stall for time.

“So Ladybug can’t interfere?” She says then her nails dig into him as her grip tightens, “Oh my god, she’s Marinette isn’t she? She _has_ to be Marinette, Adrien wouldn’t act like that with another girl.”

If he wouldn’t then Gabriel can’t help but think uneasily that he certainly doesn’t get it from _him_ as it turns out.

She continues, “I don’t understand, how did we never notice?”

Her intonation is exactly the same as it was the last time she said that. It’s freakish.

“Yes,” she comes to some sort of decision, “We _should_ cancel everything. Besides you’re only got one client to meet tomorrow anyway and I don’t like him anyway.”

“I know you don’t but I’m not sure we can turn people down just because they misspell your name,”

She looks up at him, “He’s an idiot, it’s-

* * *

_-_ in my email,” Nathalie complains, “I know it’s more common without the H in England but how hard is it to write out the name correctly, when you’ve _already had to write it_ in my email address?”

_Nathalie._

His assistant’s, his _friend’s_ , name was Nathalie.

* * *

_“_ I know, I know.” He tells his wife and assistant, “People are idiots. We both know that.”

 _He_ apparently is the greatest idiot of them all. He’d wanted to save the two women he cared the most about in the world. And he has. Except he hasn’t at all.

She looks up at him with Emilie’s viridian eyes, through Nathalie’s raven eyelashes and she’s both of them, and neither of them.

* * *

He’s not sure Emilie’s eyes _had_ been that shade before. They _are_ Emilie’s eyes in shape, in the pattern of her iris, in colour enough and yet, and _yet,_ he thinks they might be slightly bluer now.

He can’t trust his memory and all the photos, all the paintings here don’t show _Emilie,_ they show _her._

* * *

Her hair falls over her face and he lets go of her with one hand to push it back, “The thing is, I’m not sure we _should_ talk to Adrien.”

* * *

Nathalie’s hair had been straighter. He _wants_ to say that but then he hadn’t seen Nathalie’s hair ever truly down. Even in her pyjamas when he’d gone into her room it had always been tied back, if not always in a professional bun.

Now he might never know.

* * *

“Not talk to Adrien?” That outraged disbelief is all Emilie, “I don’t understand.” The confusion, laced not with an attack but just a plea to understand is all Nathalie, “We can’t just let this go on. Adrien could get hurt.”

That concern, that was _both of them,_ he thinks.

“I don’t know if we can stop him,” He doesn’t know if he wants to stop him, “What if he runs away?”

“So we take the ring.” She says as if it’s obvious.

“What if Marinette gives him another Miraculous?”

“Then we don’t let her come here. Pull Adrien out of school. Engage the security system constantly.”

Why he says it he’s not quite sure but he asks, “Do you really want to do that to Adrien?”

Her internal conflict plays out on her face, and he watches it fascinated, wondering which woman will win out. 

“I don’t.” She says, and he’s not sure that he was either of them, because perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps that was spoken by Adrien’s mother who decided her son was going to school.

* * *

Neither of them know what to say and they lie curled up together on the couch. She, he assumes, fears for her son. He fears _her_.

He’s repulsed by her, this frankensteined combination of his wife and his assistant. He dreads that what his wish has done is kill them both, and create this living zombie in his arms from their remains.

That side of him wants to shove her off the sofa and tell her that she’ll never be _either_ of them, and he doesn’t want her, and he doesn’t want her near Adrien and preferably he’d like to cut this living reminder of his sins out of his life.

And yet he doesn’t even let go of her. Because she’s all he has left of Emilie and all he has left of Nathalie and he has no idea of how to live without them. He’d, managed in some ways, without Emilie but that had always been meant to be temporary, and besides he’d had Nathalie’s help then.

The doorbell goes. _Adrien._

He forces himself to let her go, “Don’t say anything. Not yet. Not until you’re sure.”

She’ll have hard evidence soon enough he’s sure. Nathalie had had before. And he could never fault either of their determination.

* * *

He gazes on her face as she sleeps trying to catalogue where each feature came from. It’s a futile endeavour. He spends forever trying to decide whose jawline she has before he’s forced to admit that his mental image of both of them is being slowly eroded by the woman in front of him.

* * *

That doesn’t stop him doing it. Watching her and wondering who he’s watching.

Sometimes she notices him watching. She frowns creating that slight crease in Nathalie’s forehead he’d always wanted to smooth off her face, “You’re staring at me again.”

“I can’t help it.” That’s not a lie. “You’re beautiful.” That’s not a lie either.

And it provokes Emilie’s smile.

* * *

Not that it’s a surprise given Emilie and Nathalie that she is beautiful, but at times, disloyal as it is, he thinks that this wife of his now is more stunning than the wife he worked so long to revive.

Then again his wish created her. It makes more sense that she would fit his ideals than that she wouldn’t.

* * *

He still doesn’t understand why the wish did what it did.

Then again this whole story has been one of him and not understanding these forces they’re playing with.

That’s how he lost Emilie.

And now that’s how he’s lost and gained Nathalie.

Could it only have saved _one_ life? And had he been unable to choose who? And shouldn’t he have chosen _his wife?_ Or does it speak well of him that he didn’t want to sacrifice the friend who had done so much for him?

* * *

He does try to resist her.

He _does_.

It’s easier at first when his skin still crawls when she touches him, and he remembers who she’s not. Vaguely he realises that how he can’t stop looking at her but also can’t bear to touch her must seem odd to her but she never _says_ anything about it.

Ironically it’s _Nathalie_ who makes him give in.

He’s sat down exhausted. Exhausted over pretending that his wife is just his wife. Exhausted over not knowing what to do about Adrien. Exhausted over not knowing what to do about any of it.

Then her arms slide over his shoulders and he doesn’t have it in him to resist her any longer. He lets her wordlessly share his burdens the way he always has.

Then when he looks up at her and is rewarded with one of Emilie’s kisses he lets that happen too.

* * *

When he kisses her is the only time he’s sure which woman he has with him because it’s just as it was with Emilie.

Sometimes though, _sometimes,_ she does something that isn’t Emilie, and he wonders if that’s Nathalie and what the rest of it would have been like with her.

It makes him uneasy, as if he’s taking advantage of his assistant by being with his wife.

Nathalie he’s sure would be mortified to know he knew any of this of her.

Yet it doesn’t make him stop.

In fact he finds himself chasing those moments as if it isn’t some sort of messed up combination of every flavour of betrayal of two women who trusted him.

He was a supervillain. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he isn’t a good man.

* * *

“I confronted Adrien,” She says, and it’s them keeping secret what the Peacock Miraculous was doing to them all over again.

It makes him harsh, “Without telling me?”

She flinches back and seems genuinely shocked by the anger in his voice, “You’ve never minded me making most of the decisions about him before.”

He hadn’t. Or he had. She’d been Adrien’s mother. She hadn’t been Adrien’s mother. It all rolls around in his head confusing him.

Taking advantage of his silence she says, “You were right. He won’t give up. But I pretended to accept that, and got him to promise to be more careful. He won’t run from us.”

* * *

Pretended to accept it.

His wife is liar. A good one. 

That doesn’t bother him in itself. Not when she lies to other people.

Emilie’s lies had helped him climb up in the world. Nathalie’s lies had allowed Papillon’s existence.

The question is if she lies to _him._

The answer is probably yes.

Emilie’s lies and claims that she was fine had essentially got her killed by the Peacock Miraculous.

Nathalie’s lies and claims that she was fine had almost got her killed by the Peacock Miraculous.

She doesn’t have that here. _There_ at least he seems to have got exactly what he wanted with no sting in the tail.

So what does she lie about to him here?

He studies her, but she studies him too, and it makes him wonder if she knows what she is. About how her brain works, and if there’s two people in there, or whether she’s a true fusion of both.

It’s tempting to decide that she must know, that she _has_ to know when her own memories can’t make sense, and that she’s only pretending to be unaware.

Because if she is, then she’s, _they’ve,_ accepted it and he doesn’t have to do anything about it.

* * *

“Adrien,” He asks, suddenly glad that she’d bullied him into going to his fencing competition and taking him out for dinner without her under the banner of father-son time, “Have you noticed anything odd about your mother?”

“Maman?” Adrien’s eyes are wide and innocent but Gabriel can’t forget that he’s a liar too, just like his parents, “No, why?”

“Nothing.”

Adrien brows knot in concern, and there _that’s_ Nathalie not Emilie. Except that Gabriel’s seen that expression on his son’s face back when his mother _was_ only Emilie. “Nothing’s wrong is it? You don’t think she’s ill or anything?”

Even with the Butterfly Miraculous he’s never understood his son’s emotions but just then Adrien sounded genuinely panicked as if the idea of losing his mother _isn’t_ totally unknown to him after all.

Yet if he’s noticed the change in who his mother is he’s not admitting it.

* * *

“She’s already part of the family.” Adrien says as if it isn’t a betrayal of his real mother, and Gabriel ignores him in his fury.

That was then.

Now when his brain dredges it up it rings differently but it doesn’t settle anything about whether that’s why Adrien finds this mother so easy to accept, or whether like Gabriel himself he fears losing them both again more finally if he tries to change anything.

* * *

“There could be another way,” his wife says to him twirling her hair around her finger in thought like Emilie, with a crease in her brows like Nathalie, “If Adrien’s determined to carry on, then maybe the solution is to join him, and keep him safe that way. I’ve been thinking. The Peacock Miraculous might suit me.”

It feels like all his sins have come back to haunt him and he yells at her unthinking, “No!”

Her eyes widen as she takes a step back from him as if he’d ever raise a hand to her.

“No,” he says more quietly, and she looks him up and down, and at whatever she sees she seems to switch to being worried for him rather than about what he might do.

“Gabriel?” She asks, “What’s wrong?”

He grabs her shoulders, “Promise me. Promise me that you won’t use the Peacock Miraculous”

“What?” her confusion is unfeigned and whatever she knows, whatever she _is,_ he believes that she doesn’t know what using it had done to her. 

“If you love me,” he begs her.

“Of course I love you,” she answers and sounds insulted at any idea otherwise.

“If you love Adrien,”

“You _know_ I love Adrien,” she replies wholeheartedly again.

“Then for the sake of both of us promise that you’ll never use it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Please, you have to,” his voice cracks, “I can’t lose you, I _can’t,_ not again, my beloved Emilie, my dear Nathalie, _please,_ I can’t, I can’t do this without you, don’t make me lose you. _Please._ ”

He doesn’t know what he says as he continues to beg her but he’s broken out of his appeal by her hand on his face.

“I promise.”

“You do?” His shock is quite real. Neither of them ever had before.

* * *

He loves her. That’s a terrifying realisation.

* * *

“I do. I don’t know what’s happened between you and these Miraculous Jewels but if it worries you so much I won’t do it. I won’t leave you. You’re stuck with me.”

* * *

He loves her. It’s not a surprise at all.

* * *

He could perhaps redeem himself in this moment. He could tell her everything and apologise, “Should I tell you? What happened-do you want to know?”

“You don’t have to,” her face is filled with understanding, “I think I know the important part.”

“You do?”

“I’ve been studying the Grimoire. You made a Wish for my sake didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Then I don’t need the details. I don’t need to know what happened between you and Adrien, I forgive you for it anyway.”

He doesn’t. He tilts his head down to kiss her in gratitude instead.

* * *

Even in slumber with her hair mussed up, and objectively perhaps looking a little silly, he thinks she’s the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen.

He loves every single bit of her, even the bits that annoy him, and of course he does because he loved Emilie and he-

The thought hits him like a lightning bolt.

He’d loved Nathalie.

When it had happened, when his feelings had changed he doesn’t know, but somehow over that time without Emilie, when he’d been relying on Nathalie, when she’d been martyring herself at his altar, _by the point he’d made the wish,_ he’d fallen for her.

He barely gets to the toilet before he throws up.

Grasping at possibilities he wants to believe that that’s just why he’d been unable to choose and that unable to save _both_ of them truly the forces he’d been wielding had just compromised.

But instead the idea lodges in his brain that _maybe this was what he’d wished for._

That he’d wanted to save them, but he hadn’t wanted to choose between them either, or to face what he’d done.

He’d wanted both of them.

And the Miraculous had given him both of them.

It makes him retch again.

He’d came so close to getting them killed before but this time he’s actually done it.

This time Nathalie and Emilie are actually dead. There’s no Miraculous to help him now. He’s sacrificed them both to fulfil his own wayward desires.

* * *

“Are you alright?” She bends down beside him, “Gabriel?”

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, as if apologising to her is apologising to them, “I’m so sorry.”

She lets him cling to her, and strokes his back as he cries. In some ways it makes it worse but then he owes her an apology too; _I’m sorry I love you in the wrong way_ he should say to her but he just keeps apologising without explaining instead.

* * *

There’s no grave for people who never existed. No golden portrait of Emilie. No photos of Nathalie on the company system.

He hadn’t let himself mourn Emilie before because she wasn’t gone.

Except now she is and Nathalie is too and he has _no_ idea how to mourn someone when part of them is still with you.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” he’d tell Emilie if could. He’d tell her she’d been enough, and that he hadn’t needed to change her like this to be happy with her.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” he’d tell Nathalie if he could. He’d tell her that he shouldn’t have let his desires pollute their relationship, and he hadn’t needed to change her into someone that loved him like this to value her. 

* * *

If Gabriel was a better man he’d distance himself from the results of his crime, but he’s not, and after what he’d done to them he doesn’t find himself able to deny her anything.

He’s not sure if doing that makes everything better or worse.

* * *

Chat Noir fistbumps Ladybug on TV after they save a couple of drunk tourists from drowning in the Seine and he suddenly realises that this life isn’t set in stone at all.

He knows who they are.

Adrien trusts him.

He doesn’t have the Peacock Miraculous but he doesn’t _need_ it to take theirs from them while they’re sleeping. Should it come to it he could adulterate their food with sleeping pills if he’s worried about them waking up.

And he owes it to them to try, he’d betrayed his promise to Emilie, and he’d betrayed the trust Nathalie had placed in him. However much he wants he can’t stay here where he’s made his favourite parts of both them love him while the real women in question would despise him for that he’s done.

The weight of her head against his shoulder as they watch the television almost makes him reconsider but one person he loves isn’t equal to two, he can’t continue on like this even if it would be oh-so-easy to do so.

“Shall we invite Marinette over to dinner again?” he asks his wife.

The weight shifts off his shoulder, and her warmth abandons him as she sits up and turns to face him. “We can. Though we might need to change the menu from the usual.”

“Change the menu?”

“Gabriel,” She takes her hand in his, and purses her lips in uncertainty like she’s considering whether to pass over a phone call, “We need to talk.”

 _She knows,_ he thinks immediately but he still finds himself unable to say that to her, to confess to her, and stalls, “Do we?”

She pulls his hand towards her and puts it on her midsection, and smiles sadly, “I’m pregnant.”

“But,” so many reasons why she _can’t_ be fly through his mind as the calculation of life and death dependent on his course of action rapidly re-assembles itself, “ _How_?”

She raises his eyebrows and he backtracks, “I mean I know how but,” except he doesn’t because they’d agreed that Adrien was enough, and they weren’t having more, only it was _he and Emilie_ that had agreed and right now he’s not just talking to Emilie.

“I know,” she interrupts his trail of thought, “It was a shock to me too, but you know I’d been having issues with those hormones,”

The doctor _had_ been concerned about that with _Nathalie_ thinking that might have been a contributing factor to her dizzy spells but he’d never thought it would be an issue when the woman in front of him has never used the Peacock Miraculous.

“and I’d come off them while the doctor looked into a new one, and I’d thought at my age,”

She’s not that old. She’s younger than him certainly.

“We were safe enough but apparently it’s not unusual to have a late period of fertility, and, I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want another child.”

“Do you?” He asks, and he’s asking her but he’s also silently asking, “Did Nathalie?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it after what we’d agreed but now that it’s happening,” She nods, “Yes I want this child.”

“Well then,” he feels the cage drop down around him as his plans fall further out of his grasp, “I suppose we’d better work out how to tell Adrien he’s getting a little sibling rather belatedly.”

“Let’s just hope he or she don’t end up closer in age to Adrien’s children than to him.”

“No.” He says automatically, “Adrien and Marinette are _not_ allowed to have children until they’re at _least_ 25.”

She laughs, “They’d need to be a little older than that to avoid that issue.”

He doesn’t join in and her face falls, “Gabriel, are you angry with me?”

“I, no, I can’t be angry at you.” Not when she’s what he made her. Not when she’s all he has left. He is quite another matter and he’s _furious_ at himself and his own weaknesses, and his selfishness. “We’ll work it out.”

He’ll work it out. Somehow. He’ll fix it.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea who this is for. I'm sorry. there was a worse version


End file.
